One person who can relate to what life must be like these days for Canadiens coach Michel Therrien is Guy Carbonneau.

March 9 will mark the seventh anniversary of Carbonneau being fired as coach of the Canadiens.

Does he have any advice for Therrien during these trying times for the club, even after general manager Marc Bergevin gave his coach a strong vote of confidence last week?

Carbonneau chuckled at the question Wednesday, then said: “It doesn’t matter what kind of advice somebody would give him. You’re in this by yourself. You’re surrounded by people that you trust. His assistant coaches and his GM and the owners, the players — and that’s pretty much the bubble that he lives in right now. He’s got people around him, a girlfriend and the kids that love him and always support him.”

There are a lot of Canadiens fans still calling for Therrien’s firing, which can’t be easy on him even when he has a contract that runs through the end of the 2018-19 season.

“You get up to use the toilet (during the night) and you’re still thinking about it,” Therrien said about his job during a recent episode of 24CH. “You’re always thinking … it’s non-stop. You get there early and leave late. You go home and keep watching, preparing. Your wife’s talking to you and you’re still in the clouds. Ask any coach, he’ll tell you the same thing.

Carbonneau can relate.

“There’s a lot of pressure there,” said Carbonneau, who works as a hockey analyst for RDS. “I can tell (Therrien) not to read or not to watch (TV), but you know it’s impossible. You live with it. We’re all built and made differently. I was able to get through this sleeping pretty well. Some people can’t sleep, some people they control stuff in different ways.

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“The fact that I played almost 20 years … been through it as a player a little bit kind of helped me manage,” added Carbonneau, the last Canadiens captain to hoist the Stanley Cup in 1993. “But it’s a different thing. As a player, you have a direct impact on the game. You can do something on the ice. You don’t enjoy when people criticize you (as a player), but at least there’s things that you can do to kind of overturn that.”

And that’s where the problem lies with the Canadiens. While firing Therrien might satisfy frustrated fans and possibly give the team a short-term spark, it’s the players who have to perform on the ice. And that might explain Bergevin’s decision to state last week that he will not fire Therrien this season — no matter what happens — putting all the blame on himself if this team fails.

“I just find it odd that they haven’t made any move to get this team better,” Carbonneau said. “I know it’s a little late now and I can understand. But if they thought in September that they had the team go to the Stanley Cup … I don’t know.

“You see the same thing we’ve seen over the last 10 years, which is no No. 1 centre, no No. 1 right-winger … and that’s not to disrespect the guys that they have there. But we keep talking about this, we keep mentioning it. When you don’t have that and you lose your best player and probably the best player in the NHL (Carey Price) for a long period of time … if they expected Mike Condon to replace Carey Price they were mistaken. I don’t know who made that decision, but there was something wrong.”

Almost six years after being fired, Carbonneau still doesn’t know what he did wrong as coach of the Canadiens, never receiving an explanation from former general manager (and former friend) Bob Gainey. The Canadiens had a 35-24-7 record at the time and had won five of their last seven games, including Carbonneau’s last game behind the bench in Dallas. The previous season under Carbonneau, the Canadiens finished first in the Eastern Conference with a 47-25-10 record, led the NHL in goals scored (262) and had the league’s No. 1 power play, clicking at 24.3 per cent.

“I’ll never get it … and I’m not looking for it, anyways, anymore,” Carbonneau said about an explanation for his firing. “I made my peace with what I did. It’s always upsetting when you get those calls (getting fired) and it’s never fun. We all have an ego and think that we do things the right way.

“I wish they would have told me so I could get a better grip of what I did wrong and how I could get better,” he added. “But it didn’t matter because I never coached after.”

Coaching in today’s NHL — with a salary cap, limits on roster sizes, long-term guaranteed contracts and limits on how many times a player can be sent to the minors without clearing waivers — involves a lot more than just Xs and Os. Coaches can’t rule with an iron fist like back in the days when Scotty Bowman was behind the Habs bench.

“It’s like raising a family,” Carbonneau said. “Before, coaches were paid to coach. Now, they’re paid to babysit, to be a father, a mother, a coach, a psychiatrist, a psychologist. They have to deal with the media, they have to deal with the fans … it’s not an easy thing.”

But Carbonneau added it’s a job coaches love.

“I enjoyed my three years,” he said. “Was it easy? Nah, not always. But I would go back tomorrow morning. Somebody (from an NHL team) calls me tomorrow morning, I’ll go back behind the bench, no problem.”

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